India claims to reclaim tea as their national drink

A cup of tea may be as British as fish and chips, but India's plantation owners are campaigning to reclaim it as India's national drink.

Tea has grown wild in India since at least the 12th centuryPhoto: CORBIS

By Dean Nelson, New Delhi

4:57PM BST 11 May 2012

Their campaign to brand the cuppa Indian follows a surge in popularity of tea or chai drinking across the world's second most populous country in recent years.

Indians now consume more tea than their plantations throughout the north-east of the country in West Bengal and Assam produce.

But although tea had grown wild in India since at least the 12th century, when it was used as medicine by tribes in Assam, it did not start to become popular until it was discovered by the Scottish explorer, Robert Bruce, in the 1820s.

Then British East India Company traders were searching for new cheaper alternative to Chinese tea, which was bought with Indian opium or silver.

As tea production spread from Assam to the Darjeeling Hills, its popularity began to grow among Indians, but most of the plantations exported their tea to Britain.

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Its popularity in North India – coffee was in greater demand in the South – was dented by opposition from Indian nationalists, including Mahatma Gandhi who objected to exploitation of Indian labour on the plantations and regarded tea as a British 'intoxicant.' Cheaper production methods in the 1960s however made it more affordable to India's poor and saw the rise of the roadside chai stalls, where low grade tea dust is boiled with milk sugar and spices and served in small glasses.

Bidyananda Barkakoty, chairman of the North Eastern Tea Association, said while the British commercialised tea production in India it has always been an Indian brew and should now be recognised as its national drink.

"Tea is an Indian beverage, very much part of Indian culture and indigenous to India. The British didn't bring it from outside, the Britishers however to some extent commercialised and popularised it in India. Tea was exported from Assam to London in 1830s and clearly shows that we had tea before Britishers came to India.

"The popularity of tea in India can be attributed to its low cost, medicinal values and refreshing experience," he said.